Attorney General Greg Abbott mounts a furious offensive against President Obama

Save Gov. Rick Perry, no statewide politician in Texas has mounted the sort of furious offensive against the policies of President Barack Obama more than Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott.

Over the past two years, Abbott has challenged new rules that aimed to reduce air pollution from factories and refineries, an Environmental Protection Agency finding that greenhouse gases threaten the environment, the president’s health-care reform law and the fight over funding a health-care program for women.

He escalated his opposition to a new level Wednesday, openly challenging the constitutionality of a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, a landmark piece of civil rights legislation that aimed to knock down barriers that Jim Crow-era laws had imposed to keep minorities from voting.

His argument is a tea party favorite: that the Obama administration action has violated states’ rights.

“I see it very much as a piece of a doctrine that Attorney General Abbott and Gov. Perry have been fleshing out and trying to articulate,” said Jim Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.

Abbott’s willingness to engage in high-profile legal fights that excite a vocal contingent in the Republican base and his $12 million campaign war chest have fanned speculation that he is considering a run for governor in 2014.

“He’s aching to (run) after the better (part) of a decade as attorney general,” said Cal Jillson, a political science professor at the Southern Methodist University in Dallas. “The best way to prepare himself is to be solid with the base of the base of the base of the Republican Party.”

Jillson said that Abbott’s use of states’ rights to challenge a landmark piece of civil rights legislation would be “catnip” to tea party groups.

“This is certainly the kind of argument that resonates with extreme conservatives in the state and, for that matter, nationally,” Henson said. “It’s an approach that’s increasingly identified with Texas.”

Arguing that the Obama administration’s policies violate states’ rights has been a favorite critique offered by tea party groups against the Democratic administration in Washington. Abbott has made little secret of his effort to appeal to such conservatives, who have become increasingly influential in GOP politics.

His 2010 re-election campaign heavily featured tea party iconography: His bumper stickers included a modified Gadsden flag, with a snake coiled around the letter A with the motto: “Don’t Tread on Me.”

Abbott has explained the use of that symbol, which was most commonly associated with the Revolutionary War before the tea party revived it, by saying, “It actually is a connection with the biggest issue of our time. It is the issue of the federal government encroaching into our lives more than any time in my lifetime.”

He added: “We want to send a message that we are part of the process of trying to take our country back from this unprecedented over-reach.”

One of the driving forces in Austin promoting this renewed emphasis on states’ rights is the Texas Public Policy Foundation, an Austin-based think tank that has deep ties to Perry and prominent Republican donors.

“The tyranny of the majority is great so long as (it is) embracing policies that you like,” said Mario Loyola of the foundation. “But when it goes against you, and you realize that you have nothing to protect you from the tyranny of the majority because the federal courts don’t enforce the Constitution anymore against the federal government, then when that goes against you, you’ll realize why some of us are so unhappy about what Obama is doing now.”

He said Obama doesn’t understand the limits of federal power, but denied that Obama’s election served as a catalyst for the anti-government sentiment.

That’s an assertion that UT’s Jim Henson doesn’t buy, pointing out that Perry first flirted with the notion that Texas could secede from the United States during a tea party rally in Austin less than four months after Obama was inaugurated.

“The election of Barack Obama, really, was a kind of tipping point for this kind of right-wing thought,” he said.

He cautioned that it is hard to determine accurately what role race is playing in politics because voters are more likely to give pollsters answers they feel are socially acceptable, instead of relaying their true feelings when asked about the issue.